18.1.5 MySQL Server Using InnoDB Compared with NDB Cluster

MySQL Server offers a number of choices in storage engines. Since
both NDB and
InnoDB can serve as transactional
MySQL storage engines, users of MySQL Server sometimes become
interested in NDB Cluster. They see
NDB as a possible alternative or
upgrade to the default InnoDB storage
engine in MySQL 5.5. While NDB and
InnoDB share common characteristics,
there are differences in architecture and implementation, so that
some existing MySQL Server applications and usage scenarios can be
a good fit for NDB Cluster, but not all of them.

In this section, we discuss and compare some characteristics of
the NDB storage engine used by NDB
Cluster 7.2 with InnoDB used in MySQL
5.5. The next few sections provide a technical comparison. In many
instances, decisions about when and where to use NDB Cluster must
be made on a case-by-case basis, taking all factors into
consideration. While it is beyond the scope of this documentation
to provide specifics for every conceivable usage scenario, we also
attempt to offer some very general guidance on the relative
suitability of some common types of applications for
NDB as opposed to
InnoDB back ends.

Recent NDB Cluster 7.2 releases use a mysqld
based on MySQL 5.5, including support for
InnoDB 1.1. While it is possible to
use InnoDB tables with NDB Cluster, such tables
are not clustered. It is also not possible to use programs or
libraries from an NDB Cluster 7.2 distribution with MySQL Server
5.5, or the reverse.